Samantha Combs's Blog, page 27

If Stephenie Meyer Writes Poorly Or Not Is No Longer The Point

A question was posed on a group I belong to on facebook a few days ago that has started quite a lively discussion.  A fellow writer asked "Does anyone else think that 'Twilight' was poorly written."  Immediately, my facebook page started to light up.  In fact, my message system had to piggyback the posts, they were coming in so fast.  With the exception of two diehard 'twi-hards' everyone weighed in that they thought, in fact, it WAS poorly written.  I found that interesting.  People indicated their English professors hated it, they hated it, they themselves couldn't drag themselves through the first of the whole series, even.  Huh.

So, now I will weigh in.  I read all the books.  I will agree, they are not ever going to become literary classics.  Stephenie Meyers had a good, well-timed concept.  She had some unusual plot twists, ie: softball-playing vampires in thunderstorms, the concept of imprinting werewolves, the "sparkly" thing, werewolves doing mind reading, and vampires having different, special abilities.  Some things she overused.  Her commas were tragic, her run-on sentences and wordy paragraphs epic, in my opinion.  But there is one thing Ms. Meyers did exceptionally well.  She gives good tension.

Open any of the books to any page and the angst leaps off and spurts all over you.  The introspection from her lead, Bella, is legendary.  The damn girl is always thinking!  She must not own any Nike products.  You know....Just Do It?  She thinks everything to death.  But this is how you get an ass-numbing 700-plus page book....half the damn thing is her thinking the hell out of everything before she makes a move.  But that's what teens do.  Have you ever seen My So Called Life?  Angela Chase AGONIZES over everything.  I'd try to name some teen show today, but seriously, there is none.  Everything comes with a laugh track and nothing tackles the heavy topics.  When one does, I'll write about it.  Freaks and Geeks came close and they canceled it.  Figures.

And here's another thing.  It is REALLY bad form to trash talk an author that has made it.  A) it looks like sour grapes.  B) its just not classy.  C) who the hell are you anyway? They are caring about your puny opinion all the way to the bank.

 Let me just add up the score.  An agent loved their work, a publishing house loved their work, nine hundred million fans loved and BOUGHT their work and another eighty trillion people ponied up for the movie tickets, posters, t-shirts, mugs, mouse pads, clothing line and amusement park family pack, so again, don't think they really care.  And since Ms. Meyers is now PRODUCING a movie based on her favorite author Jane Austen, I don't think she cares at all.  She is living the dream.  And shoot me here if you need to, but I would SWEAR the dream has lately included a touch of cosmetic surgery, because her last photo showcased an entirely more 'streamlined'-looking Ms. Meyers, if you know what I mean.  But, hey, given the money, I would get hair extensions myself, so whatever.  Move on.

I just have one final thing to say on the topic and actually, I will let MY favorite author, Stephen King, have the honors when he compared the current favorite hot-topic series right now:

"Harry Potter is about doing what is right in the face of adversity. Twilight is about how important having a boyfriend is" - Stephen King ♥

Aspen Mountain Press Anniversary Blog Tour

Hey guys, if you want to get involved in a supercool giveaway, I want to tell you about my horror publisher's anniversary/birthday blog tour going on now.  I didn't get in on it early enough, but that doesn't mean my followers shouldn't hear about it and take advantage of some neat blogs and the opportunity to win some great books and fabulous prizes!

So without further ado, here is the official release information:

Happy Birthday Aspen Mountain Press!!!!!
We are Celebrating with a huge Blog Tour.

Full of Free E-books and Prizes, and one lucky tourist will get to take home a Kindle of their very own.
For full information and to start your touring of the AMP Blogs please head over the to AMP Blog
http://aspenmountainpress.com/blog/2011/07/31/happy-5th-birthday-aspen-mountain-press/
Leave a comment and then find the link to the next blog, most are near the comment section a few on the side bar :) Every time you Comment you are entered into the drawing for a New Kindle, Wi-Fi, Graphite, 6″ Display with New E Ink Pearl Technology, not to mention you will be entered to win prizes on the Blogs you hop to.
Winner will be announced on The Amp Community loop on Sunday August 7th 2011 during our big final celebration, you do not need to present to win. But it will be a lot of fun to be there. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/AMP_Community/
Full set of rules can be found at the first Blog stop and most stops along the way.
So come on out and party with us and this time let it be you who takes home a gift.

Happy Touring from all of us at Aspen Mountain Press


http://aspenmountainpress.webs.com/


See?  What could be more fun?  And easier?  So, let the touring begin!

A Pound Foolish, Penny Wise or Counting Words Doesn't Work For Me

I, like most of the nation and likely, the world, have been watching the debt negotiations on Capital Hill.  One side wants to cut defense and one side wants to cut aide to the needy.  They won't compromise and meet each other in the middle and so in one day many people who depend on government assistance won't get it.  I'm one of them.  I'm receiving unemployment for the first time in my life and I'm not too proud to say that my family would be in a world of hurt without it.  The people in power spend all day long haggling over their various points and at the end of the day, they are nowhere.  You might be wondering what this has to do with writing, but I think it is a current and timely illustration of how wrapped up a writer can get in the machination of writing and lose the soul of it.  Let me explain.

So many writers get overly focused in how many words they write in a day or a sitting.  I'm guilty of that myself.  I tweeted last night about writing 2600+ words yesterday.  The difference is this morning, I didn't delete any of them.  Every word counted.  Every word was meaningful and had punch and moved the story forward.  I don't think this is always the case with a writer overly focused on the quantity of the product and not the quality.  I am just as happy if I produce 500 words, but those 500 words do the same thing, ie: are meaningful, have punch, and move the story forward.

Early in my writing life, I would write prolifically and then read it back over at a later time and realize it was  verbal throw-up.  Just too words regurgitated on paper.  It was back story, unnecessary and didn't move the story anywhere.  It stagnated it.  I would end up pounding the delete key.  And think that the time spent writing those words wasn't time well spent.  That part would be wrong.  Maybe I wasn't going to be using those words, but I was learning a valuable lesson nonetheless.  I was teaching myself word economy.  I was learning to be penny wise.  I was learning how to tighten my story and edit myself.  And that is one of the most priceless things a writer can learn.

I'm happy I learned that early.  Tightening my story and editing myself has allowed me to write short stories as well as novels.  I still need editors, desperately.  But, I am so much better than before.  And when I edit, I can see where I went sloppy in some places far more easily than if I never had those early times when I had to delete lines, paragraphs, and more times than I can count, whole chapters.  I strive to never be a pound foolish, unlike my government.  But, I still count words!  I like the way it looks.  Some habits are hard to break.

Things I Think About When I Write Horror

I am one of those writers that genre hops.  I explained it this way one time in an interview I did with a blog site.  For me, it equates to shoes.  I can't wear the same pair of shoes day in and day out.  The same goes for my writing.  I am lucky to be able to switch gears often, from sweet romance, to paranormal, to horror, to sci-fi, back and forth, as the mood strikes, in the same manner as I wake up and the mood or weather dictates what I will wear that day and the shoes that will go along with it.  Or vice versa.  As any shoe-maven worth her salt knows, the shoe actually dictates the outfit.  Shoes first, make the outfit work around it.

This is the same reason I am able to have more than one manuscript going at once.  For instance, currently I am working on these: a paranormal with romantic undertones in the YA category, a sci-fi about aliens, another YA about a vampire hunter, and a demon slayer based on the seven deadly sins.  Depending on my mood, my muse and I decide which one I want to work on when I am ready to write.

Just as I have several loose things I think about when I write YA, I have the same thing for when I write horror.  I was just having a lively discussion with a Facebook friend and decided our topic would make a great blog post.  He agreed.  He called it advice, but I am not that pretentious.  I just want to call it things I think about when I am writing horror.  Again, they aren't set in stone.  They just help me.  Maybe they might help you, too.  Maybe not.  Whatever.

The first thing I always do is place my characters in a normal situation.  It's exactly what Stephen King does and why he is so good at horror, because he draws us in with the mundane, the believable, and before we know it, he twists it and swivels it and we didn't even know it was happening because we were so lulled by the normalcy in the beginning. When I do get to the actual horror part, I try to remember that white space can be a very effective tool. Sometimes just hitting the enter bar and giving the "discovery" it's own line can do more for the discovery than the discovery itself.  Ex:  If I bury "...and then she saw the hand, severed from her husband's arm." at the end of a long paragraph, I have crushed the impact it could have had.  But consider if I did it this way:         And then she saw the hand. (this is the end of the paragraph).

         It was no longer attached to Richard's arm. 

         A stand-alone line has a far greater impact than one trailing at the end of a paragraph.

     3.  The next thing I try to remember is that writing horror is not always about making it gory and blood-filled.  Sometimes the horror part can be filled with tension or suspense.  I write some horror scenes with the IDEA of horror rather than the demonstration of it.  Oftentimes what the character can imagine can be far scarier to them than what is really there.  The mind and what the imagination can conjure up is far more frightening than anything real.  I think of my most terror-filled nightmare, and I've had a few of those, and work from there.  The fear of the unknown is far more powerful that what we know.
    4.  The last thing I remember is this:  If it scares me, it'll likely scare someone else.
So, hopefully, this tells you at least how I go about it.  And if you like this, please check out my upcoming horror book, The Detention Demon, releasing in October through Aspen Mountain Press' imprint, Aura Speculative Fiction.  Thanks!

Things to Remember When Writing YA

I have been asked to be a judge in an upcoming short story contest being held on one of the groups I frequent on facebook.  I consider the request to be a great honour indeed.  Only three authors were asked and of the three, two of us appear to be receiving extremely favorable reviews for our book and one has a huge following for a book due out next month.  One of us is very active in the making of book trailers and all three of us are quite active in the marketing of ourselves, our brand and our published pieces.  We have given interviews, we blog often and mostly about writing, and all that being said, I believe we are all three wonderful candidates as judges.We are myself, author of Spellbound, Scott Prussing, author of Breathless, and Kyberlee Burks-Miller, author of the soon-to-be released Compulsion.
The contest is a short story contest for a YA short, not to exceed 7500 words, beginning July 30 thru Aug, 6, 2011/  Get details here: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=108939899205399.  Anyone who is a member of  YA Reads on facebook is eligible to enter.  Check it out!
I thought it might be a good time to give some of my tips about writing young adult.  These are just my suggestions.  None of these should be cast in stone.Remember at all times that writing for teens doesn't mean write as though they are stupid.  They aren't. In most cases, they are highly intelligent kids, learning about themselves and feeling their way through some of the most enlightening periods of their lives.  Respect that.Don't trivialize what they are going through.  If your think the scene you wrote sounds like a bad after-school special, it probably does.  Treat your characters with dignity, no matter what you have them going through.Don't think the lingo and terminology from YOUR youth will still play today.  It won't.  And your reader will realize it almost on the first page if you try and fake it.  If you intend to write for a specific age group, you have to spend time with them.  Join a library group and read to them, volunteer at a school, or just go hang out at the beach.  But do it A LOT.  One hour at the mall won't do it.  Teens have a whole different language and it will take time and dedication to master it.  There is no Rosetta Stone for teenspeak.Understand a teen's attention span is about the same to us as our life is to the life of the common housefly.  SHORT.  You have to capture it on the first page or they toss the book/ipad/kindle aside and grab a DS/Wii/PSP instead.  There is no world-building/character-study/working-up-to-it-ness allowed in a middle-grade or young, young-adult book.  You have to slam them into the action IMMEDIATELY and keep them there for the whole first chapter.  They have to be asking questions at the end of the first paragraph and wanting answers or you already lost them.Covers are EVERYTHING.  Splashy, gaudy, dripping with color, or with a teen just like them on the cover and they will buy it every time.  Think of every Sarah Dessen book you ever saw.  What's on the cover?  Something that relates to a teen-aged girl, right?  Look at her latest one....back view of low-rise jeans, bottoms covering the feet, hands stuffed in the back pocket in the classic "What-ever." pose.  That cover SOLD that book.  Plus her name of course....synonymous with teen angst and empathy.Here's the plus side:  If you get all that right, teens practically DEMAND books they love get made into movies.  They buy and buy and buy until agents and movie producers sit up and take notice and before you know it Mandy Moore and KStew and Emma Stone are lining up to play your ansgst teenaged heroine in a movie based on your book!  (So I dream.  We all do.  Whatever.  Move on.)All I'm saying is everyone thinks it's so easy to write YA and I just want you to know, it's not.  Just remember, as complicated as you were when you were a young adult, consider putting all THAT done on paper.  Right?  I rest my case.

Today We Lost Great Talent

Amy Winehouse died today.  Anyone who has read a newspaper, or a gossip column or a tattle rag in the last three years shouldn't have been surprised by this news.  She was a train wreck, a cautionary tale, a disaster waiting to happen and everyone knew it.  We all knew it.  We saw the botched concerts, the pictures of her with red-rimmed eyes and bones with her skin barely clinging to them, and videos of her so addled by drugs and pure excess she didn't know what she was doing.  We saw all of that.

And then we would hear her sing.

For a few minutes, a few bars of a song, and sometimes a whole concert, she would be clear and the clarity and sincerity and truth of her voice would rise us up and take us to that place only a few artists can ever truly take us.  And we would hold out our hands like four year old children and beg to be taken there.  Her voice was a gift and it was simply too big for her to handle.  It is a tragedy told over and over again in the worlds of the truly talented.

As an author, another kind of artist, the news was astonishing.  I first felt a paralyzing loss in my heart at the tragedy for her parents. Then the true depth of the loss sank in.  We have lost her voice.  We have many like her, trying to sound the same as her, but there will only ever be one Amy.  Just as there was only one Curt and one River and one James and one Chris and one Marilyn and one Diana.  Sometimes our world is too cruel and too unkind and too insincere for the truly gifted, the truly precious, the truly special.

So, as an author, as an artist, I mourn Amy.  I mourn the music she would have made and the gifts she had left to give the world.  I know why she isn't with us and I won't pass judgment.  It is what it is.  Many articles will be written, dissecting her life and asking questions and supplying answers.  I won't do that.  I know just how I will feel.  Regardless of what she did to end up where she did, I will still miss her.  I just want to tell her one thing: Join the choir up there, Amy.  I promise, they'll love you.

Received a "Lovely Rose" From Romancing the Book" Review for Spellbound

I hope you'll allow me a little bit of horn-tooting right now.  I submitted my book, Spellbound, for review to the highly influential review site, Romancing the Book, and the responded right away with a nice reply that they didn't normally do Young Adult reviews but that they would certainly see if they had a reviewer who was interested and get back to me if I didn't mind waiting.  I was grateful for the response and replied I appreciated waiting.  I didn't hold out much hope.  There are soooo many talented writers out there and a veritable plethora of books to read.

My muse went on a field trip it seems, because not more than a week or so later I received a followup email notifying me that one of their reviewers WAS interested and with my permission, they would send my book to her straight away.  I said yes, yes, YES!  That was a couple weeks ago and the review came in today. GUESS WHAT?  I was bestowed a Lovely Rose.  In their rating system, that is only one lower than their highest rating, and when it was transferred to Goodreads, it became 4 out of 5 stars.  Good on me!

So here it is, because I am quite proud of it, and because I quite like how the reviewer did her job (thanks to you, Shyla!)  I am loving the review but I am so pleased that the reviewer was entertained by my book.  As an author, that's really all I want to do.  And the fact that this reviewer thinks I have done that is AWESOME!


Romancing the Book's Reviews > Spellbound My rating:edit my reviewshelf: readSpellbound 
by Samantha Combs (Goodreads Author), Elaina Lee (Goodreads Author) (Illustrator) 
Romancing the Book's review Jul 21, 11
bookshelves: fantasy, paranormal, ya
Read in July, 2011
Reviewed by Shyla
Book provided by author for review

Spellbound starts off and places you into the thick of action. Demons, witches destiny and young love explode across the screen. I wasn't even a page in, and I had a list of questions I wanted answered. This was a smart move expertly executed by the clever Ms. Combs. As we move on from the prologue we meet our Hero. Logan is a dark haired cutie who's breezing his way through his senior year of high school. Nothing much happens in the tiny town of Lancaster, New Hampshire. So when he see's three new girls in the office he stops to say hi, and his heart skips a beat.

Our heroine Serena star has arrived on the scene. Her honey colored hair is a mass of spirals that Logan wants to touch and I can picture vividly. Samantha has a real gift for imagery. She manipulated the words like a pro, and I have no problem envisioning the characters and their setting. From the first day she arrived we get the sense there' something strange about Serena Starr. She appears and disappears in the blink of an eye and abnormal activity occurs around her.

Logan witnesses it , but remains quiet because to him all that matters is he likes her. Serena is sweet, intelligent and beautiful. She's the perfect match for well mannered and romantic Logan, except she's a teen witch, better known as a twitch. Twitches are watched by the council that governs them, and her eldest sister makes it clear they would not approve of her dalliance with a 'normal'.

I developed a girlish crush on Logan. This is high-school sweethearts at its best. The joyous burst of emotions felt when you meet that special someone is contagious as it jumps off the page. Samantha does an excellent job of staying true to the teenage experience while inserting action, suspense and romance. The twists and turns of the plot kept me off kilter, and I was stunned when the Starr family came clean with Logan. His love interest is a future member of a the council, and it's no coincidence they landed in Lancaster. There are dark forces at work.

Serena has chosen Logan, and this means he has an important role to play too. But we won't know how important until further in to the book. The conflict with the council escalates, and the story takes a deliciously dark turn. Once the tiny town of Lancaster is over run by demons, all bets are off.

This story has it all; romance, adventure, myth and a well thought out plot. I loved how Samantha linked the lives of the characters together and gave each one their own time to shine.

The descriptions are magnificent as she breathes life to this strange new world she's created.

With witches who fly on broom sticks, have the gift of site, transform, and so much more. I would describe it as a Harry Potter for the modern, edgier teen. My one complaint was at times the scenes felt a bit long. I'd have liked to see some of them shortened. I would highly recommend this to YA and paranormal fans

Why I Don't Believe Rupert Murdoch Didn't Know

I've been watching the unfolding events of the demise of The News of the World with great interest.  And growing disbelief.  I knew there would be denials as soon as the accusations of the cell-phone hacking came out, and we all knew the denials would be lame, at best, but I didn't realize they would make me feel as angry as they do.  We've all seen those kind of denials before, from oil officials, from executives at Enron, we've heard them from as long ago from the legal teams of OJ and as recently as the Casey Anthony camp, but hearing them about the hacking of cellphones belonging to murder victims?  Surviving family members of 9/11?  This is a new low.  A low matched only by the denial of KNOWLEDGE of them by executives at News of the World.  Presidents paying bribes to cops?  To officials?  How could top execs NOT know?

Then watching old Rupert get pied in the face yesterday and being defended by his four decades younger wife who volley-ball SPIKED the offender in the face had to be to lowest of all.  It removed the situation from the tragedy column to the tragi-comic division of journalism.  And isn't the first rule of journalism this: DON'T BECOME PART OF THE STORY!

It reminds me of a story I read a while back about a Columbian jourmalist who hosted a popular crime show.  Everyone marveled over his remarkable journalistic instinct at being able to ferret out these horribly gory crime scenes before the competition in order to film them for his true life crime show (Columbia having far less constraints over what is considered appropriate viewing material for the audience, go figure).  He would arrive literally minutes after the crime had been committed, besting his competitors for the scoop of a lifetime.  Internal Affairs investigation later revealed he was actually COMMITTING the murders, then filming them, so he would always be first on the scene.  He would pay off the local police to be in on the scheme.  When the news broke, this "journalist" became the story.

The News of the World story may not be exactly similar but the ookiness factor is the same.  At some point, if only one news outlet is getting the amazing inside scoop time after time, someone has to start asking not the hard questions, just the reasonable ones.  Someone has to say, "Who has his hand way in the wrong cookie jar?"  After all, in order for evil to prevail, all it takes is for good men to do nothing.  Somewhere, in the wreckage of The News of the World, a good man cowers, silent.

I'm just wondering what he's thinking now.

Why Borders Failed - IMO

First thing I want to state is that I was one of the legions that loved to go to Borders.  I remember sprawling in the aisles with my shoes off and a pile of books to my side, reading joyfully, with no concept of time, then taking my tower of treasures to the register and buying as many as my allowance would allow (hence the origin of the word 'allowance') and staggering home with them in the white plastic basket with the pink plastic flowers affixed to the front of my Schwinn.  And this was in my twenties.  I loved that bike.  Me and a roommate bought it for $20 at a yard sale and when we had no dough, would ride it to the shops.  And Borders was one of them.  But I digress.  Let me tell you, in my opinion, the one reason why Borders was doomed.

They never came up with an e-reader.

As an ebook publishing gal, that hurts the most.  When Amazon burst onto the scene with the Kindle, the publishing world lost its collective mind and formed its two camps almost immediately.  The righteous lined up quickly on the right, claiming that nothing would ever replace the touch and feel of good old paper and script, while "early adopters" like Stephen King got busy and immediately began publishing astonishing tomes only available to internet purchasers, angering his literati brethren.

Then Amazon began revealing that their kindle sales were demolishing their print sales and Barnes and Noble went "Pardon me? Can you repeat that?" and shortly announced their own e-reader, The Nook.  Determined to one-up Amazon, they then introduced the Nook Color.  While the e-publishing world continued exploding all over the place, Amazon kept introducing slicker, sleeker versions and reducing the price! 

And Borders introduced......nothing.

And then the Queen of all things literary, J.K. Rowling, went back on her own solemn vow and announced that the Harry Potter books would indeed become available in digital version later this year.  The epublishing world went bananas again and finally Borders said, "We give up."  They forgot a business golden rule.  No one will buy a company in the middle of a literary technological revolution that has refused to acknowledge that it is in the middle of one.

And so we say goodbye to what was once a literary powerhouse, a haven for all the glasses geeks we used to be, and I say it is a sad day, but one that a writer of e-books should rejoice in.  With death comes life.  With termination comes rejuvenation.  With surrender, rebirth.  No longer is the ebook the nasty stepsister or forgotten cousin of the revered and lofty printed version.  Now, the ebook can hold its head high.  Even Harry Potter is digital now, damn it.  Does my book come in print?  No, but you can get it at Amazon and Barnes and Noble, and in eleven other digitized formats and they, my friend, they rule the world.

Just pray we don't have a power outage.

Why I Don't "Cast" My Characters As I Write?

I read the blog post of a friend, a dear fellow author, wherein she admitted that she envisioned the Hollywood heavyweights who would play her characters once her book made it to the big screen.  Having read most of her manuscript, I checked out her "cast" and agreed with most of her choices.  I got to thinking about the idea of doing the same thing.  We write differently. I write YA.  Her, not so much, so we wouldn't have to worry about borrowing leads and what not.  Funny thing was, I couldn't do it.

I realized, reading through a couple of my manuscripts, I am not so heavy on the descriptions.  Not like, say, a sweeping historical fiction where the costume is pretty much another character on their own, my descriptions tend to be rather stock.  I'm light on them because I've decided that I want the reader to be able to create their own mental picture when they are involved in the story.  Writing YA is so much about the truth and raw realness about the emotion and the journey, that clothing and hair color, for me, is just so much window dressing.

I discovered something else too, while I was thinking about this concept.  If I did try and cast my male lead at least, they would all turn out to be a cross between my first love from high school and Jordan Catalano.  If you are anywhere near my age and don't have a Y chromosome, you know who Jordan Catalano is.  He was Angela Chase's love interest on My So Called Life and I was desperately in love with him and the unfolding of their love affair for the entire 19 episodes.  He was beautiful, and rebellious and proud and dangerous and accidentally profound and my 22 year old heart beat in unison with his.  Parts of all my characters now have a little Jordan Catalano in them, a little of his quiet dignity and his smoldering sexuality.  And those eyes, those swallow-you-whole eyes.  Oh.  Sorry.  I'm back.

Anyway, I think that's why I can't cast my characters.  Because for me, they would always be Jordan Catalano from 17 years ago.  And maybe my readers today want a sparkly vampire with deathly white skin.  Or a boyish charmer whose brother is dead but he goes sailing with him anyway.  Or a hot werewolfy guy who just can't keep a shirt on (and who'd want him to?)  For my reader, the fantasy is theirs.  As an author, it's my job to take them there.  The rest is up to them.  :-)